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New family boat
On 22 Jul 2003 23:18:24 -0700, (Frank and Ronnie
Maier) wrote (with possible editing):
whitespc1 wrote:
I am interested in a powerboat for the family. This will be used for
running around the Chesapeake bay in Maryland, skiing, tubing, and day
trips.
...snip...
Havre de Grace
A coupla comments, just FYI.
Good points of jetboats are that they are shallow draft and pretty
dependable. OTOH, they get bad gas mileage. They are easily yanked
around by skiers boarders, tubes, etc. They're not very roomy.
Our family of four decided that an open bow tournament skiboat was the
best decision for us in circumstances similar to yours. You can buy a
decent used skiboat for the price of a new jetboat. They ain't real
good in rough water; but you probably ain't out doing family
watersports when things are rough.
My $.02,
Frank
FWLIW, I went through the same exercise and ended up with an 18.5'
SeaDoo by Bombardier. It is also an open bow boat, quite broad in
beam, with a hull which seems to be perhaps a bit better optimized for
a jet boat. Our first day out on a lake we ended up coming back to
dock into relatively heavy water, 4' waves with wind-driven rain. It
handled remarkably well. The power plant is a 200 hp 2 cycle Merc,
not what I would have picked, but the 40 gallon gas and 2 gallon oil
tanks give us plenty of range.
--
Larry
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